Some Wonders of Modern Science
It is impossible in a short essay even to mention more than one or two of the wonders that modern science has discovered about “this mysterious universe of ours”. Think, first, how the science of ‘astronomy has enlarged the universe to us, and shown it to be infinitely great. The telescope, the spectroscope and the mathematical calculations of astronomers have given us such a revelation of the size of the universe as takes away our breath. Science tells us that the stars, those tiny points of light seen in the night sky, are gigantic suns, rolling through illimitable space at unthinkable distances. We cannot count even the stars seen by the naked eye ; and there are millions more that only the most powerful telescope can detect. Professor Jeans says that there are as many stars in the universe as there are grains of sand on all the sea-shores of the world.
Some of these stars are many times bigger than our sun, which Is only a medium-sized star. And many are so far from us that the light they give off takes thousands of years to reach us, though light travels at the inconceivable speed of 186,000 miles a second. The universe is so unthinkably vast that to try to think of its awful spaces and distances makes the brain reel. We live on a tiny speck of dust in one corner, going round a small star.
On the other hand, the scientist with his microscope has revealed to us the infinitely little. He shows us billions of highly organized living creatures, called germs or microbes, so small that our eyes can never see them. He tells us that every drop of water, every grain of sand, every bit of the air we breathe, every drop of blood in our veins, is filled with millions of these tiny creatures. Many of them are beneficent, and even necessary to life ; but many of them are deadly, and bring disease and death.
The physicist goes further, and tells us of things that even the most powerful microscope cannot reveal. All matter, he says, is made up of invisible atoms, and every atom is itself a tiny universe in which revolve, as the planets revolve round our sun, electric charges, called electrons. He also tells us of the ether that fills all space, of the composition of light, of the nature of electricity, and the other forces of nature.
In our childhood we wondered at fairy-tales ; but those fairy-tales were not nearly so wonderful as are the fairy-tales of science. And the fairy-tales of science are true.
